Abortion
isn’t pretty, but it’s frequently necessary, and only each individual female
in her specific, unique circumstance has the ultimate right to determine
what constitutes a legitimate abortion need.

It simply isn’t
permissible for rightwing moral imperialists to thwart anyone’s abortion
choice by alleging that “irresponsibility” or “selfishness” are the motives
involved, rather than desperation arising from objective conditions
impinging intolerably and even dangerously on women’s (and young girls’)
lives.

Religious or political
biases, no matter how strongly felt, are NOT a valid basis for zealots
keeping others from exercising control over their own bodies.

The idea that church
or state should interfere with our sisters’ reproductive lives must be
resisted as strongly as free people are obligated to resist all blatant
attempts at imposing authoritarianism.

However, we don’t
disrespect the heartfelt views of those who sincerely feel abortion is
wrong. May their convictions never be put to an excruciating, personal test.

Nobody can quarrel
with someone who says: “I don’t believe in abortion, and I like to think I’d
never get one myself. But it would be wrong to force my view on others.”

We hope such good
people will also promote measures that would lessen the prevalence of
unacceptable pregnancies in society.

That includes favoring
enlightened sex education and the ready availability of inexpensive birth
control for all.

It also entails
dismantling outrageously sexist notions, girded by age-old conservative
assumptions, which enforce the stereotype that females exist primarily as
desirable outlets for male libido and that it’s a woman’s “place” to bear
however many babies a husband may...make.

Let’s remember that
feminist sensibility arose primarily because of a proper unwillingness among
women to perpetually be fated to stay barefoot and pregnant.

As parents, our chief
role in this regard is to raise our boys to treat girls in an appropriate
manner. Dramatically reducing (if not eliminating) teenage date rape will do
much to lessen the need for abortion.

Primary among these is
the calculated calumny that abortion, even in the initial stages of
pregnancy, “murders” a human being as certainly as shooting a clerk in the
face during a convenience store robbery.

Sensational sophistry
is the anti-choice movement’s stock in trade. We’ve all seen their
billboards which feature cute pictures of born babies wearing bonnets or
playing with balls, suggesting that early fetuses are no different.

Not as “children,” but
as developing entities in the first stages of human gestation.

Aborting fetuses
definitely does prevent them from finally becoming babies, but it’s medical,
scientific, and legal hokum to spread the “murder” assertion to manipulate
this issue for argumentative gain.

Here are some key
aspects about abortion we should all bear in mind:

1) Males are generally
the sexual aggressor, but they get left off the hook (and vital remedial
measures are chronically deferred), when the onus for abortion is always
placed on females.

2) As a cornerstone of
liberty, abortion and general reproductive health must remain

the dominion of
private, personal choice, not the wielded bludgeon of sanctimonious,
hypocritical ultra-conservatives. They profess to venerate life, except in
their vociferous support for capital punishment and aggressive, unprovoked
wars that kill countless innocents, including pregnant Third World women.

3) It’s bigoted
misogyny to outrageously devalue living females by building a fraudulent
philosophy that they should have less say-so than zygotes.

Many of us have older
female relatives who relate shocking stories of how horribly women and girls
died at the bloody hands of back-alley butchers before Roe v. Wade legalized
a practice as old as history itself.

6) “Partial Birth
Abortion,” which can’t be found in any reputable medical journal, is a
made-up name for a procedure very rarely carried out, to protect the life of
the prospective mother. Through vague legislation barring this practice, the
anti-choice movement hopes to outlaw all abortion. It’s tyranny’s foot in
the door; it’s dictatorial dogma in our bedrooms.

7) Tremendous
superprofits are realized by reactionary corporate interests that promote
gender inequality and hire women at much lower cost than men. Keeping
females economically and socially second-class citizens begins with beating
back their hard-won reproductive rights. Women who resist abortion are
unwittingly facilitating their own overall exploitation.

Finally, to show just
how harmful the rigid anti-choice stance can be, consider the following:

Immediately after
taking office, George Bush initiated a global prohibition of U.S.
governmental aid to reproductive health providers overseas that mention
abortion while serving their clients. Writing in the Baltimore Sun, women’s
advocate Carmen Borroso explains:

“The rule also
prohibits any advocacy for legal abortion, even if made without the
organization's own funds. When the International Planned Parenthood
Federation's Western Hemisphere region refused to accept those unethical
restrictions on its freedom of speech, it was denied $12 million of critical
support by the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2001. The people
affected by the gag rule: poor women in Latin America and the Caribbean who
rely on family planning clinics for basic medical as well as reproductive
health services.”

Do conservatives feel
the injury their outlook brings multitudes? Do they weep over preventable
funerals?

No, they do not.

In addition, their
outlandish fetus worship throws up obstacles to human advancement, via the
cure for a multitude of dreaded diseases, through their resistance to stem
cell research.

For reasons cited
earlier, we know the Right’s ballyhooed reverence for “life” is selective
and bogus.

Republicans in
Congress, for instance, will champion “unborn babies”. But where does their
compassion go after birth?

Over the years,
they’ve fought tooth and nail against key social programs designed to give
kids better beginnings in actual life. Everything from WIC to Head Start.
Likewise, they’re always thwarting minimum-wage hikes or meaningful
healthcare and daycare proposals that would go a long way toward mitigating
the urgency for abortion when new additions suddenly come into families
already pressed to the limit.

Divorced from
rightwing rhetoric, choice reveals itself as the only credibly defensible
position on this question.

Telling free American
women what to do about abortion (and striving to legislate an actual
prohibition) is the cutting edge of an entire, intolerant agenda that would
take away basic rights from not just females, but racial and
sexual-orientation minorities, workers, dissenters, etc.

If you’re unhappy
about how government of, by, and for the people has been replaced with
self-serving rule by conservative, white, male corporatists engaged in
Enron-like crime in the suites and imperial wars, stand up for abortion
rights. Abraham Lincoln’s vision of what America should be will indeed
“perish” from this earth if the anti-choice lynchpin of abysmally backward
politics is locked into place.

Let’s get conservative
noses out of other people’s affairs, and instead unite with all threatened
constituencies to jointly struggle for full realization of what no
conservative or Republican will ever advocate.

Justice.

There is so much
inequity stemming from rightwing sources that they dare not mention the one
word that carries with it a crying demand for corrective change.

Defend choice.

Its absence would be
lethally intolerable for millions, and would definitely foreshadow an
eventual, wholesale loss of elemental freedom in the United States.

And let’s not
forget that defeating George Bush on November 2 is the pivotally important
first step to firmly securing our precious liberty.

Dennis Rahkonen, from Superior, WI, has been writing progressive
commentary and verse for various outlets since the ‘60s. He can be reached
at dennisr@cp.duluth.mn.us.